1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical manipulator, a treatment system which includes the medical manipulator, and a treatment method using the medical manipulator that is inserted into a body cavity and used when performing a procedure on various tissues in a body cavity.
Priority is claimed on U.S. patent application No. 61/093,494, filed Sep. 2, 2008, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/500,950, filed Jul. 10, 2009, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, as an example of low invasive treatment, various procedures such as gallbladder extraction using a laparoscope or the like are performed. This kind of laparoscope procedure is performed by making a plurality of openings in the abdominal wall and a plurality of instruments being inserted therein.
In recent years, in order to reduce the burden on the patent by further reducing the number of openings to be made in the abdominal wall, it has been proposed to perform procedures by inserting a flexible endoscope from the patient's natural orifice such as the mouth, nose, or anus. As a medical device that is used in such a procedure, for example a treatment endoscope has been proposed as disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0249897.
This treatment endoscope has a flexible insertion portion that has flexibility, and a pair of arm portions that have a bending portion that performs a bending action are provided at a distal end of the insertion portion, and a plurality of channels that are disposed in the insertion portion and lumens of the arm portions are continuous. The operating portion of the treatment endoscope is connected to the arm portions by an operating member, and is constituted to be capable of bendably operating the arm portions up/down or left/right.
The user inserts a treatment instrument such as forceps into the channel, mounts an operating portion of the treatment instrument to an operating portion of the treatment endoscope to project the distal end of the treatment instrument from the arm portion and operate the operating portion up/down or left/right, whereby a procedure is performed by causing the distal end of the treatment instrument to approach the tissue of the procedure target from a different direction.